Jason Mulligan

Friday, 1 February 2013

From the Earth to the Air

This Carrara Marble relief panel has been in my private collection for several years. I made it back in 2008. It measures 1m x 26 cm x 2.5 cm. The marble is extremely thin and I remember being extremely anxious when working on it. Due to the fragility it was carved using only hand tools and in a way the stone dictated what I was going to be able to do with it.

At the time I can recall marvelling at the aerial photography of Yann Arthur –Bertrand. His airborne odyssey took him across six countries, photographing specular panoramas of vast geographical formations. These photos gave a different perspective of landscapes; coast lines and rivers in extraordinary compositions of light and form. What I ended up doing was a result of these photos, but the landscape was not fixed to any location but recalled within my own memory. It is a landscape that I still enjoy studying especially when it comes to life as it did here at 3.30 pm on 27/01/2013, illuminated by a wonderful winter light. The title by the way is ‘Tundra’.

Saturday, 26 January 2013

When light and shadows play across their surface

There is an obsession that many stone carvers share and it is that they find it difficult to throw anything they cut or carve away. No matter how small and insignificant the stone may be, there are experiments and explorations in stone that sometimes cannot be explained. We keep hold and place them on the shelf glancing at them every day hoping to find a use or an explanation to the unique physical properties of the form. Suddenly, when working on something else you turn around one day and there is a unique moment when light enters the studio and shadows play across the surface of the objects that have preoccupied you for months. It is just then that the significance and relevance of these forms are transformed into sculptures and the clarity fills you with vigour.

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

One book I have come across while doing the PG Cert. that I am actually looking forward to reading.
'Art and (aesthetic) mythology, according to Dewey, is an attempt to find light in a great darkness. Art appeals directly to sense and the sensuous imagination, and many aesthetic and religious experiences occur as the result of energy and material used to expand and intensify the experience of life'.